The tension-filled dynamics between the group of scientists who created Morgan offer some intrigue, with Dr. Amy Menser (Rose Leslie) proving to be the only one of them who sees this creation as a human being rather than just a science experiment.
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But while it is technically Lee Weathers’ story, the most interesting dynamic is how the scientists around Morgan react.
Director Luke Scott appears to owe a lot to his father, Ridley Scott (“Alien”, “Blade Runner”) with his debut picture, “Morgan”. Her interior life remains mostly a mystery, but frustratingly the film becomes less concerned with its deeper queries as it progresses. Morgan is generic and forgettable, with minimal suspense and a plot that never deviates from the predictable, but it features enough craftsmanship to distract from the most glaring flaws.
In the end, Morgan had thunderous potential, but it is content with never looking past its monster’s own watery reflection, a feat Boris Karloff surpassed a long time ago. For no good reason, Morgan springs across the table and stabs the other woman violently in the eye.
‘Morgan, ‘ with Kate Mara, Anya Taylor-Joy, Paul Giamatti, Toby Jones, Michelle Yeoh.
The outer cast are elsewhere as Mara (dead-eyed, ruthless) and Taylor-Joy (sad, confused) throw themselves into a series of excellent action sequences.
In Morgan, Anya plays a manufactured “human” built from synthetic DNA.
Livelier than its tiresome title yet still derivative of similar movies, Morgan is a sci-fi thriller in which an all-business risk-management consultant named Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) is sent by her corporation to a remote research facility where an experiment has gone awry – specifically, a lab-grown, artificial-intelligence creation called Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) has turned violent, endangering its potential as a consumer product.
The film centers on its three lead female characters who include “Game of Thrones” actress Rose Leslie as Morgan’s closest friend, and Morgan’s struggle with gender identity. The ownership, the propriety ownership of Morgan means this synthetic human being would have copyright stamped all over it. For better or worse Morgan has been as deliberately engineered as its subject, created to be nothing more than a slim line of credibility-challenged horror plot twists and over-the-top fight scenes between two young women. Neither Lee not Morgan are clearly heroine or villain – Lee’s only attempting to do her job and preserve the asset, while Morgan, with a clearly developed sense of selfhood, is also attempting to preserve the asset, herself.
Morgan, for that matter, isn’t particularly complex. Although she’s highly intelligent and self-sustaining, she has the mind of a small child and doesn’t understand how the world works. Not that Morgan didn’t already have its problems in its slow-burning first half. A more ambitious script would have sought to do something weirder with Morgan’s relationships with these people. Which is, of course, the point, but why is that made so obvious? Despite all the emotional distress and sympathy that comes with being forced to tap dance for her supper (or life), there’s always something working beneath the dark eyes, suggesting survival above all else. It becomes like watching The Terminator.
The film sets up Morgan as a sympathetic character and then starts depicting her as an antagonist; Lee is her foil in many ways, but she’s someone you root for even though she has the more villainous arc.
The beauty of Owen’s screenplay is its open questions about Morgan’s nature and the effects of the nurturing attention she’s received.
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‘Morgan’ is playing at Sonoma 9 Cinemas, 200 Siesta Way, Sonoma.
